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Comment by frostburg | Hacker News Reader

The water needs to enter the nose, but given the design of our throat it's a good idea to boil it anyway.

The fact that an air intake borders our brain is a massive security weakness in our "intelligent" design (the quotes are for sarcasm). It's like allowing HTTP calls from your webservers to be routed, in some circumstances, to your not-firewalled, not-SSL, not-password-protected database. Like building a massive bank vault with all sorts of protective layers, then adding a small unlocked door that opens on the street.

I just hate that the smallest sinus infection can affect my overall system by producing massive headaches, or that these mofo organisms can just trek up my nose and feast on my brain cells. Clearly the Earth atmosphere is just too welcoming; selection on this trait was never forced, and here we are.

The minute we start making cyborg augmentations to improve filtering of our air ducts, I'll be the first in line.

The sense of smell is ancient and has served animals well since forever. That's why the close coupling. The olfactory bulb is like a part of the brain in the nasal cavity.

Your eyes are actually an outgrowth of your brain and they're exposed right out in front. The eyes have their own extra defenses though.

Good point.

Still, we have highly-effective sensors in other parts of our bodies, further away from the brain, and surely we could drop that check somewhere else. At least when it comes to eyes, one can make the argument that they should enable split-second reactions to run from that predator as soon as you spot it, so they should be as close as possible to the mainframe... whereas nobody is going to die if they can only smell wolf poo a second later.

>whereas nobody is going to die if they can only smell wolf poo a second later.

I'm still alive today because I can detect smoke very early. This ability has saved me from indoor electrical fires and wildfires. Hunter gatherers who lived in makeshift shelters probably depended even more frequently on this ability.

Would detecting the smoke 1 second later have made the difference? (I think that's the essence of GP's comment.)

Signals can travel relatively fast across the entire length of a human central nervous system. Proximity to the brain likely benefits signal-to-noise ratio more than speed.

Seems like smelling something toxic a second before consuming it would be useful as well.

> The minute we start making cyborg augmentations to improve filtering of our air ducts

Market it as a COVID-19 solution, and you won't have any issues finding funding :-)

Your threat model here is wild. You'd rather have machines surgically installed in part of your actual brain than risk an amebiasis that you're only seeing in the news right now because it so rarely actually happens to anyone that House, MD did a whole, typically awful, two-parter about it.

If you're really worried about defending your brain from all comers, you should really start by having all your maxillary teeth pulled and replacing them with a denture plate. Their roots are a lot closer to your brain than you likely realize, and an untreated maxillary abscess is much more likely to quickly progress to fatal encephalopathy than you are to ever insufflate water containing N. fowleri.

> You'd rather have machines surgically installed in part of your actual brain

Not the brain, just nose and mouth. Saying bye to colds, headaches, allergies, respiratory infections, with a simple filter? Fuck yes :)

> you should really start by having all your maxillary teeth pulled

Oh yeah, if I weren't so poor I would have done that years ago. I still hope to be wealthy enough, one day, that I'll be able to replace all my teeth with artificial ones that don't decay.

> Not the brain, just nose and mouth.

So, a mask with extra steps?

No; a mask i don’t have to put on and off, doesn’t stop me from talking clearly, doesn’t stop from eating and drinking, doesn’t make my face sweat, doesn’t make my glasses steamed, doesn’t need to be replaced every day, etc etc.

> The fact that an air intake borders our brain is a massive security weakness in our "intelligent" design

That, and you can be choked to death while eating always reminds me it's more a cruel joke than an intelligent design.

Every time I sneeze while I'm chewing, I'm reminded there is no god.

Yup. As experienced by anyone who was drinking something while they read or heard something funny. Suddenly, you have your drink coming out of your nose.

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